Fam,
One year ago today, we released “Struggle for Power: The Ongoing Persecution of Black Movement by the U.S. Government” in partnership with the CLEAR Clinic of the CUNY School of Law. Today, the federal government remains just as committed to undercutting radical organizers for racial justice.
The report lays out how the federal government greatly exaggerated the threat of violence from protesters during the summer 2020 uprisings and charged them with inflated federal indictments that carry significantly harsher penalties than local charges, all in an attempt to wrest power from local communities that had taken to the streets nationwide.
The fight for Black liberation is not new, and the federal government’s intimidation, sabotage, and violence to prevent our progress isn’t either. But we have never and will never let them stop us from fighting for the free and thriving world our people deserve.
Check out the full report here to learn more, then text POWER to 90975 to join the movement for our future.
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In the fight for Black self-determination, power, and freedom in the United States, one institution’s relentless determination to destroy Black movement is unrivaled—the United States federal government.
In collaboration with the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility clinic (CLEAR), the clinical arm of the City University of New York, the Movement for Black Lives releases Struggle for Power: The Ongoing Persecution of Black Movement by the U.S. Government. This report details how the federal government deliberately targeted those who supported the movement to defend Black lives during the summer of 2020 uprisings, in order to disrupt and discourage Black organizing.
On the heels of the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, millions of people mobilized to form the largest mass movement against police violence and racial injustice in U.S. history. Collective outrage spurred decentralized uprisings in defense of Black lives in all 50 states, with a demand to defund police and invest in Black communities.
This brought global attention to abolitionist arguments that the only way to prevent deaths such as Mr. Floyd’s and Ms. Taylor’s is to take power and funding away from police.
Last summer, in a flagrant abuse of power and at the express direction of disgraced former President Donald Trump and disgraced former Attorney General William Barr, the federal government greatly exaggerated the threat of violence from protesters and charged them with inflated federal indictments that carry significantly harsher penalties than local charges, all in an attempt to wrest power from local communities that had taken to the streets nationwide.
This persecution resulted in hundreds of organizers and activists facing years in federal prison with no chance of parole.
Prosecutors are charging Tia Deyon Pugh, an activist in Mobile, Alabama, for civil disorder for allegedly breaking the window of a city police vehicle. In order to argue that federal jurisdiction exists, the government used a false and superficial basis, arguing that her actions impacted interstate commerce because the larger group of protesters Pugh was a part of had moved in the direction of an interstate highway. However, the group never reached the highway because local police preemptively shut down the on-ramps providing access to the highway. The government claims its own preemptive shutdown of the on-ramps caused traffic delays and therefore impacted interstate commerce.
For more than a century, the U.S. federal government has actively attempted to suppress Black social movements in order to control Black mobility and quell collective action and power.
After 250,000 people organized for the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs in 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ratcheted up the surveillance and interrogation of Black movement leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and the Black Panther Party, in a deliberate bid to infiltrate, penetrate, disorganize, and disrupt the Black movements for rights, power, and freedom, and to preserve the established white supremacist order.
The federal government remains committed to undercutting radical organizers for racial justice and Black power whose insistence on exercising our inherent rights threatens white Americans’ political and social dominance. The summer of 2020 uprisings in defense of Black lives represented a turning point with respect to policing and prosecution.
Over the next three weeks, follow along as we tell the story of the ongoing persecution of Black social movements by the government, and what you can do to defend Black communities and build power with us.
Text POWER to 90975
In solidarity,
Movement for Black Lives
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